Saved by the Slice

In the not too distant future, eating pizza has become essential to our survival. Those unable to eat enough pizza have become Starved—extremely aggressive and hungry people that attack on sight. The world as we know it is falling into chaos.

Supplies are scarce and Starved roam the streets. It’s every man for himself. How long can you survive?

Saved by the Slice is a greasy survival card game for 2-4 players about exploring, defeating Starved, and eating pizza inspired by games like Dungeons & Dragons, Go Fish, Hearthstone, and more.

I'm the game designer, illustrator, and product designer on this project. Work on Saved by the Slice is currently on hold while I determine next steps based on player feedback.

Pizza + Zombies = Starved

The general theme for this game has been kicking around inside my head and jotted down across multiple text documents for a few years. It started out as a rogue-like iOS game where the players goal was to survive for as long as they could by eating pizza and avoiding hungry zombies. At the time I was still putting the finishing touches on my other game Power and wasn't sure I wanted to make another iOS game right away. I had also started playing more board games like Coup and Pandemic Legacy so I decided to adapt a bunch of my initial notes for the game into a card game.

Making the transition from a rogue-like iOS game to a physical card game was not easy. Early versions of the game would last 2 minutes or sometimes well over an hour (with no obvious end in site). The toughest challenge early on was finding the right balance of cards in the deck. Thankfully everyone I playtested the game with were not only enjoying it but were having fun helping shape the game with their feedback.

Paper Prototyping

The beauty of working on a physical card game was being able to create more with my hands. The earliest versions of the game were cut up pieces of card stock with handwritten names, stats, and descriptions. This approach allowed for quick edits to the cards themselves and to the number of cards in the deck. I also created prototypes for how the box should be built.